Wednesday, June 4, 2008

things that suck...being plagarized

one of the inherent dangers of blogging your thoughts is the risk of another person taking credit for your ideas.

this has happened to me several times and it feels bad

it feels even worse when they make money off of your ideas

...there are people making money off of my ideas right now, and it stings.

to be honest, i feel really petty even acknowledging this. any thoughts i've had other (smarter, cooler, brighter) people have had before me (you know, we all stand on the shoulders of giants); but the ways i've chosen to articulate those things and contextualize them in our world feel like "my" work.

which, btw, i don't profit from at all (other than my base salary from ww).

and i'm not even really concerned that i personally profit from this stuff...i think through this stuff because i love it, and i feel honored that jesus has permitted me to see things in a certain light, and i believe strongly in the potential for transformation resulting from this stuff

...but it feels really, really dirty for someone else to be making money off of my ideas.

and,
seeing as how "they" seem to be getting "my" ideas off of my blog (and possibly from the ww podcast) i thought i'd just let them know that the next idea they should borrow is "character."

do your own thinking, please; or, at least, acknowledge that phrases like "curious and disenfranchised", "shadowing god in the world", "theologian-bricoleur", "stormborn", etc... all come from the same blog.



i feel better. it will make no difference, but i feel better.


flame off.

5 comments:

  1. well i'm glad you feel better, but now i'm SUPER PISSED. Give me a name and an address, and we don't have to talk about it anymore.

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  2. Yeah. What he said.

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  3. I've got to agree with Tim. Dave, I'm sorry: this just bites. All I can say is that I appreciate your blog and hope that this does not ultimately discourage your blogging.

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  4. I'm with Tim on this one! Stealing words is stealing. This happened to a guy where I work and it ended up in court (he won). That you don't get cash from what you write today doesn't make any difference, and doesn't mean that you never will... When you do, you don't want to get into an argument about who thought up a phrase first. At the very least they should footnote the reference (and write with a Canadian accent!).

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  5. when I was 4 years old, I created a super hero named 'guerilla host.' I had such huge plans for fighting crime under that name.

    Imagine my pain when I came to WW and discovered that somehow Dave had heard about my super hero all the way from canadaland and stolen him.

    You're right...this stuff hurts.

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